With a new public poll from the Public Policy Institute of California showing him tied for second with Fred Thompson and John McCain, just six points behind the still frontrunning Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney is spending five days campaigning this week in the Golden State. It’s the first long campaign swing in California, a pivotal primary next February 5th, for the former Massachusetts Governor, who leads in Iowa and New Hampshire but continues to lag in national polls.
Among other things, including the obvious goldmining, er, fundraising every day, Romney is doing three “Ask Mitt Anything” town hall meetings in California as he campaigns around the state, the first of which was Sunday in Orange County. There he was asked by the mother of a Marine how much longer he has to spend in Iraq, two which he replied that he wants to grow the Army by 100,000 to stop long deployments of existing forces. Romney ends up in the state capital Sacramento on Thursday.
While Romney is making a concerted strategic move on Giuliani’s turf in California, the week ahead in presidential politics belongs largely to the meta-issues of Iran and climate change. And the latest presidential forums in both parties. The Democrats, who will make a pilgrimage to the other big national labor federation besides the AFL-CIO, the Change To Win coalition, comprised mostly of the most liberal unions in the land. And the Republicans, who will mostly be absent from a black-oriented forum hosted by liberal talk show host Tavis Smiley at Morgan State Universty.
Everyone’s favorite Iranian fanatic, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is in the US this week to address the UN General Assembly and a gathering at Columbia University, where the university president helpfully added that he would invite Hitler to speak. Which is one way of putting things in perspective, though many suspect that Iranian politics is more complex than that.
Ahmadinejad’s already provided ample kindling for a political firestorm by requesting an escort to Ground Zero, the site of the late World Trade Center in New York. As he must have expected, Republican candidates tripped over one another to denounce the proposed move, with former New York Mayor Giuliani of course in the forefront. Yet he still plans to go there himself. Clearly he knows what he is provoking in American domestic politics.
Although Fred Thompson has moved closer to him in national polls — and Romney is taking a shot at his lead in California — Giuliani had a mostly very good week last week. He won the London sweepstakes with a high profile trip to the UK in which he delivered the inaugural Margaret Thatcher Atlantic Bridge lecture — he declared that Iran must not be allowed to go nuclear — and received the Margaret Thatcher medal of freedom from the former prime minister herself. He also had a high-profile meeting with Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, met privately with former Prime Minister Tony Blair to confer on the Middle East with the new Middle East envoy, and fielded questions from Winston Churchill’s grand-daughter.
A decidedly bigger haul than Fred Thompson garnered when he ventured to London in July. Yet Thompson, and John McCain, did notably much better than Giuliani at the end of the week when the top Republicans all appeared before the National Rifle Association.
Giuliani, like Romney, as it happens, was an advocate of gun control. Both men promoted new views. But they reportedly did not go over all that well. Especially so for Giuliani, who promoted lawsuits against gun manufacturers.
Needless to say, Giuliani is happy to get the focus back on national security matters, courtesy of the obliging President Ahmadinejad.
As it happens, the top Democrats have also denounced the notion of Iran developing nuclear weapons — even left-leaning John Edwards, who ran as something of a centrist in 2004 — so they’ll be chiming in this week as well.
But amidst all the drumbeats on Iran, at least one of the nation’s most senior military leaders wants to cool it a bit.
Admiral William Fallon, commander of U.S. Central Command — General David Petraeus’s boss and former commander of the Pacific Fleet — told Al Jazeera on Sunday that he does not believe the US will go to war with Iran, and that the “constant drumbeat” of war is counter-productive.
The other meta-issue of the week is climate change.
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Schwarzenegger!
Schwarzenegger!
That’s our governor. lol
It is pretty amazing. Not that he’s not a real smart, sophisticated guy. But it is quite amusing/outrageous — in a good way — that the star of Terminator/Total Recall/True Lies/Predator etc. is doing this stuff.
The Delta Force Major in “Predator” was his only government official before he ran for Governor.
Actually, there is also the US super-agent in True Lies. He seems higher up in the hierarchy.
My favorite is when he calls in a Marine Harrier airstrike on a convoy carrying a nuclear bomb in Key West.
The Marine pilots ask him if they might set off the nuke. He says no. He’s not actually so sure about that …
I forgot about him.
True Lies is a bigger hit than Predator.
True Lies is a bigger hit than Predator.
Nuke ‘em.
The endless games about Iran prove boring. At which hundredth threat does America realize it has nil credibility?
Threat is the dominant mode of this administration. It has no real idea of how isolated and lacking in credibility it has become.
Gov. Schwarzenegger has credibility. Mr. Bush does not. That is the difference that the Karl Roves could never have anticipated.
Gov. Schwarzenegger has credibility. Mr. Bush does not. That is the difference that the Karl Roves could never have anticipated.
Sorry for the double -posting.
Sorry for the double -posting.
This deserved to be double-posted. It is amazing but true as Bill put it this Administration “has no real idea of how isolated and lacking in credibility it has become.”
>Jonathan Hemlock :
Gov. Schwarzenegger has credibility. Mr. Bush does not.
The Bush White House is a joke.
They are clearly incompetent.
I mean, it’s very hard to sit here and act with equanimity as they do obviously stupid things around the world.
Yet … they’re not really a joke because they still have a lot of power.
They are clearly incompetent.
I mean, it’s very hard to sit here and act with equanimity as they do obviously stupid things around the world.
Yet … they’re not really a joke because they still have a lot of power.
Powerful people are the funniest people.
What’s so funny?
I think you may be mis-assessing Change To Win. Andy Stern is not a traditional liberal; he’s not even anti-globalization. Even Business Week reported, a few years back, on how Change to Win was diverging from the standard union playbook.
They’re funny because they’re stupid.
Andy Stern and SEIU are organizing public employees. Why would they be against globalization?
One of their goals is to organize illegal immigrants.
>Auros :
I think you may be mis-assessing Change To Win. Andy Stern is not a traditional liberal; he’s not even anti-globalization. Even Business Week reported, a few years back, on how Change to Win was diverging from the standard union playbook.
Sep 24, 2007 06:23 PM
Incidentally, NWN passed 40,000 comments sometime in the last week.